Real Estate

Sales volume is off in many markets, but some home owners still aren't willing to lower their prices.

A recent CNN/Money article confirms what we've been seeing: Most people still don't believe that there is a housing slump. We see this mostly in terms of sellers who cannot imagine that housing prices have fallen, thus they set their prices too high and properties remain on the market for an extended period of time.

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Read more from this blogger: Most Still Don't See A Housing Slump

Housing prices in Calgary are sky high with the continuing oil boom.

"What some say??" The housing market here is absolutely ridiculous and the Stelmach government refused to impose rent controls making this city and it's ongoing almost 0% vacancy rate unbelievably hostile to low-income and middle-income renters. Buying in this environment is practically out of the question.

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Read more from this blogger: The Liberals Take Ralph Klein's Old Riding

A look at the Layered Transaction and seller concessions.

I recently read a very informative and enlightening blog post written by a loan officer named Larry Morris. Larry tackles the difficult question of the propriety of seller concessions in quickly devaluing real estate markets. In other words, the price of a property is reduced before a contract is written at the original price with a seller’s concession. The term “layered transaction” is used. Note: The lender is aware of the concession, but is not aware that the selling price was inflated. It sounds like a simplistic scenario, but believe me … it’s not. Mortgage fraud has many disguises and is often very subtle and difficult to detect.

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Read more from this blogger: The Layered Transaction

Will lower housing prices translate into lower real estate taxes?

Taxes are going down and no one is going to like it. Here’s why, housing prices are going to fall about 50% from where they are now (we can argue this later). Therefore property taxes will be lower. Our roads will not get fixed, our schools will continue to be over crowed, and the primary reason that people moved to South Florida will be gone…great weather…low cost of living! Don’t fear, they will still be available in Florida; however it will be in other parts of Florida.

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Read more from this blogger: REDUCE PROPERTY TAXES

If more foreclosures end up in liquidation auctions, housing prices are likely to drop.

I spotted this article from the San Diego Union that follows on my blog concerning the failure of lenders to recover adequately on foreclosed properties. If liquidation auctions become an important mainstay of the real estate market going forward, then this will rapidly and decisively feed through to general housing prices.

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Read more from this blogger: More Clues on the Uncured Foreclosure Question and Trouble in Clusterfuck Nation